I wake up one day with a sore chest and an accompanying wetness that I’ve been dreading the arrival of for months. I sigh heavily; I knew this day would come and I have mostly managed to accept it. Most would probably see this as something to celebrate, but influences from my past life are hard to kill off, even as much as firmly as I’ve rejected it.

It's about a week after I gave the power armor to Borala and helped find her son. I'll be fifteen in half a year, which is when I'll be considered an adult. It's a strange thing to think about; I've been considered a child all my life... all this life.

While I do have memories from my past life, those are... more like a dream. I don't know if it’s because I try so hard to reject that life or if they’re just naturally like that, but I am thankful their influence over me is fading.

There's going to be an adulthood ceremony for me at the Lojyo of my fifteenth birthday. I've participated in it many times for other people, but for some reason it never felt like I would be the one to have a ceremony performed for me.

The ceremony is a bathing ritual with a special oil, usually performed by a priestess. Everyone chants around the new adult as she baths beneath Myrou's statue. A pair of earrings will be made by the parents and given to the new adult. Though these aren't nearly as significant as a Kyhosa, they still have importance as they signify one's adulthood, and both are worn until marriage.

When proposing marriage, one of the earrings is exchanged with one of the other person's earrings, so the earrings are often made unique and made to represent the new adult.

I get up and, somewhat grudgingly, go and find Mom, who is predictably excited at my development.

"You're becoming an adult, Alysara," Mom says happily, "but this means that you'll probably have to learn how to deal with mating season."

I groan; I'm going to be getting 'the talk'. Runalymo aren't like the humans of my past life; we have a mating season twice a year that lasts a few weeks, instead of a fertile period each month. The exact timing of mating season is different for everyone, as is its severity: some people aren’t too bothered by it, others have it really bad. I’m hoping mine is relatively mild.

I just bear through the lesson, which is thankfully not too long. In short, there's a fairly simple contraceptive spell I can cast, or I could hypothetically have someone else cast on me if it were necessary for whatever reason. I wonder if I can just skip mating season entirely through a hormone regulation spell?

Runalymo society doesn't have knowledge of hormones, but I do; maybe I can revolutionize the whole mating season thing and prevent it from happening... or induce it if people want.

With my bodily needs taken care of, I send four clones over to the Dungeon. I should try to get my Bond as high as I can before my next Race evolution, but there's also something I've severely neglected, related to my mana and magic studies: maybe I should include divinity in that general category as well?

Anyway, I should now start studying magic frameworks in more detail – divinity aside, it's my first and highest-leveled enhanced breakthrough, and I'd like to cap it. First, let's start with a summary and see if there's anything I missed.

Magic frameworks are the union between divinity and magic; order and chaos, creation and destruction. Magic frameworks are responsible for Classes and skills and use 'experience' to grow. Why does magic need experience? I'm not entirely sure, but it seems to be a catalyst for true magic to work. Magic eats experience, and it influences the direction of magic framework evolutions; it also seems to influence the creation of magic items, but that’s a separate issue… I think.

That seems to be the extent of my overall knowledge of magic frameworks. My inability to see the other half of it – the divinity side – is a problem, but I can still infer some things: for example, the amount of divinity available to the magic framework seems to be the reason why ‘levels’ are limited.

By looking at the amount of magic within a skill or Class magic framework, I can determine its level... but can I do that with Race skills as well, to find out how strong they are without a level?

I sit in my chair in my room to get comfortable, then I focus on my Race magic framework and study the magic quantity of the skills. Something rather odd quickly becomes apparent: the magic in it should far exceed the divinity, which shouldn't be allowed under normal circumstances.

Obviously, I am comparing the limits of other Major-tier Races and Classes I can see, since I can't see divinity. There seems to be another source of divinity for my Race, which I can only attribute to two things: the Heirloom tier or the [Sense Magic] and [Nexus Immunity] skills that came into the framework from the outside.

Normally Classes seem to derive their divinity from the skills or tier, but that has to be different for Races, right? Maybe I am missing something, a key piece of the puzzle. First, what are tiers? Are they a source of divinity or a measurement of it? Why does it only increase with evolutions? Then there's the tier bonus, which seems to be magical?

I absentmindedly play with my hair, twirling it with a finger while pondering the mysteries I am staring at.

Then there's the question of what miasma and experience truly are, which may be vital in answering the previous questions, since they are responsible for the growth of magic frameworks. So, what are they? Miasma and experience are negative and positive versions of each other, respectively; if experience grows magic frameworks, then miasma destroys them. Both are generated by ‘achievements’.

I peer into the Dungeon and watch the teams of monster slayers fight in the dens, paying close attention to the generation of miasma and experience.

Miasma is created from the hardships and failure that are inevitable components of worthy achievements. In a fight, every time one takes damage, the fear of losing, getting hurt, or even death is enough to generate miasma, but on the flip side, triumphing over monsters, escaping alive, saving others from being hurt and other such positive accomplishments all produce experience.

The generation of miasma and experience is not always equal – and they cancel each other out to a degree – but, in general, the harder the task, the more miasma is produced before it is finished, and the more experience is produced when one finally succeeds.

This is everything I've observed so far, so let's get into the more theoretical stuff. What are miasma and experience; not what do they do, or where do they come from, but what are they?

I have one hypothesis, and that is that they are some sort of energy, like divinity. If miasma can be turned into more magic, as cursed beings do, then obviously the magic/divinity balance of a magic framework would be broken if too much miasma is… for lack of better words, ingested. If that's the case, then experience should make divinity grow, which will help stabilize the magic framework.

Hang on... How does the magic in a magic framework grow, if not like that? And if experience increases divinity and miasma increases magic, then isn't miasma necessary?

I get up and start pacing back and forth to help my mind focus on this revelation.

If, instead, the miasma wasn't just being neutralized by experience but instead being consumed to help grow magic frameworks, then it isn't just something to be avoided. What does that mean for my cursed skills?

That explains why the skill itself being cursed doesn't destroy the soul; the skills have a built-in mechanism to deal with miasma, and Classes have a mechanism to draw out that miasma for their own use, but that mechanism doesn’t have a limiter, so the Class framework ends up taking too much at once from skills that come pre-packaged with miasma, making magic greater than divinity in the Class framework… which ends up tearing it apart.

This suggests that it is possible to curse a skill just by using it normally, if miasma is accumulated without experience to match... which is why the magic framework for general skills exists; it draws out excess miasma from the skills attached to it and discharges it, or uses it for some other means. Classes are an altered form of the general skill framework, which use the miasma for other purposes… But some skills clearly don’t fit into the general framework, only the proper Class one, so gaining them manually makes them cursed because they’re not designed to dispel their own excess miasma… Which means that if I can somehow build a magic framework for cursed skills, designed to draw out their miasma, then it should be possible to cure them.

I need to observe how a second Class is grown; but then again, the opportunity to gain more Classes seems to be something obtained by reaching certain milestones, but why is that? Why do certain milestones need to be passed?

I already qualify for a second Class, so maybe I should take a closer look into the framework of my general skills, but there is one important question I first need to ask. If there is a milestone for cursed skills, what do I need to do to get it? It's a huge risk to even get to the milestone, it'll be even more of a risk to actually form a magic framework without knowing for sure that it will safely drain miasma from my skills… and that is all assuming that this is even possible in the first place.

The risk is simply too great; I cannot risk forming a magic framework around cursed skills, nor do I know how. I already have a method that should work and is safe... but there is an issue with it: if I use the skill without a magic framework, it will just become cursed again, so maybe I need to purify them first and then somehow make a magic framework around them? Or perhaps I just need to transfer a purified skill over to a Class or Race immediately after getting rid of the miasma?

I sigh heavily, stop pacing, and put a hand on my chin in thought.

No wonder no one has managed to cure cursed skills; it's complicated, requires a lot of risk, and requires an enhanced skill to even start studying. That one elf Safyr heard rumors of might just have been an exaggerated tale, or maybe the elf just stumbled into the cure, or maybe they were just a con-man seeking to make a buck off of bearers of cursed skills.

Well, let's get to studying how the whole milestone thing works.

I peer deeply into my general skills magic framework; there has to be a buildup of magic and divinity to form the seed for another Class framework... but I don't see anything. Perhaps I need a breakthrough for it, so let's look for what I can’t see...

I am looking for something, not a magic framework yet but something less... like a bundle of magic? Of divinity? No, a seed that is a mix of both; what would that look like, though, and where is it? If I had to guess, it will be at the core of the general skills framework, since that’s where the milestone comes from.

I focus intently at the core of my general skill framework, looking... feeling for a mix of divinity and magic; it has to be there.

A faint fuzziness, so dim I’m momentarily uncertain I really saw it, attracts my attention, and I concentrate on it. Suddenly a bright, magical star comes into focus with a chorus of 'tings' to announce its arrival. A powerful source of magic shines in the core of the magic framework.

Ting! Sense Magic has met the requirements for a breakthrough and will continue leveling past level 820!

41st Breakthrough: You have observed the magic within an apotheosis seed; this will help you unlock the mysteries of the system.

Ting! Sense Magic has obtained levels 695-728!

In addition to the new breakthrough, several other breakthroughs also gained levels in both action and knowledge. I can only see the magic of it, not the divinity – unfortunately, I still am blind to the other side of the system, and I’m not sure how to fix that – but now I have a new goal: to study this apotheosis seed while I still have the chance.

This suggests that an apotheosis seed needs a magic framework to form, but if that's the case, how does the Ultimate Class form? Maybe it's applied to a skill or Bond skill that is already in a magic framework? But this is all speculation; I'll get to it if I have the opportunity for more practical observations.

I continue studying the apotheosis seed, watching how the raw magic behaves. It shimmers and swirls against something else, something invisible but distinctly separate, but looking at actual magic frameworks indicates that magic and divinity are fused together, forming one new thing, like an alloy of magic and divinity.

It seems like the magic and divinity have yet to actually fuse together in the apotheosis seed, which suggests that the two must fuse once they form a new framework. This leads to more questions, like what even is this raw form of magic? Is it a particle, like mana?

I crank my perceptive pressure up to the max on the apotheosis seed and focus intensely on it, ignoring a few 'tings' of my skill leveling further. Under the intense gaze of my skill, I observe the very fabric of existence warping under the chaotic magic, a dizzying churning, and twisting which bends the space into complex and impossible forms.

Magic is not matter, energy, or any other form of ‘thing’ that makes any sense by normal logic. It is… chaos, the metaphorical dice of randomness and impossibility; it is change. Magic seems to be an intrinsic property of reality, the fabric of existence. Or maybe I’m just being overly poetic and have no idea what I’m looking at, that’s also possible.

For each question answered there, several more need to be answered. Why and how does mana fuel magic? Why and how does miasma feed it? And more importantly, if magic is the very embodiment of chaos, then what does that mean for cursed beings? Why are they called cursed? I received a breakthrough for seeing 'a magic being' when seeing a cursed being, but that implies that not all magic beings are cursed beings.

I will have to investigate this later… but for now, let's see how much my skill has grown while I was thinking.

Ting! Sense Magic has obtained levels 729-747!

Ting! You have gained the Sense Space general skill!

Ting! You have too many general skills; would you like to remove one or keep what you have?

[Sense Space] is one that I've been thinking about getting, not just to potentially help slay monsters but also to help me make better portals and storage items, and maybe work out where the ectoplasm comes from when the Dungeon creates monsters. It's definitely going to be a contender for the next skill I get, once I free up some slots.

Having such a source of magic to study has proven invaluable: I have gained over fifty levels in a day and, more importantly, I now have a clearer insight into magic and, in turn, its opposite, divinity.

This is a huge breakthrough in my study of magic; I should at least record it into my book. Since my book is made of mana, I can just add more to it. I need to make a new one anyway: Lotis is a little confused on parts, probably because it teaches each breakthrough of [Sense Mana] in sequence; it’s a skill book, really, rather than being a proper guide to mana as a whole.

I divert a clone to the task of making a book to explain not just mana, but all my sensing skills. This one won't just be how to learn the skill, but will teach the fundamental concepts and everything to help others understand mana, magic, and souls as best as they can.